Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

Events occurring and how they relate/affect Anabaptist faith and culture.
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temporal1
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

Post by temporal1 »

agreed, again, mike. not what we want, but, assessing reality.

my daughter now works in a public elementary school (on the left coast.) :P
last evening, i asked what her sense of things is, following the Cruz murders?

:arrow: her first response was, “mental health assessments” are worthless. :shock:
she said the language to get around them is easy, commonly known, if anyone can’t figure it out, just google. i believe her.

btw.
this school is adjacent to their middle school and high school. wealthy area.
there have been several alerts/lockdowns/early closings this year .. some when i was there.
when one school is alerted, all schools respond.

calling in threats is popular in this age group.
honestly, i remember some of this when i was in school, 60’s-70’s, colleges had threats, too.
how to determine what is a prank, what is real?

criminals, and the criminally insane, are clever! they use technology.
so do pranksters.

“everyone loves” the idea of mental heath assessments. i do, too. it is fabulous on paper.
real life is another reality.

the legal system, mental health workers, everyone’s hands are tied due to laws protecting offenders.
the world will end if anyone is falsely detained! - so, let them all run free.
our streets reflect the problems. paper pushers focus on their papers, do not visit streets.

thankfully, most criminals, most insane, do not commit murders or mass murders.
the ones that do get media coverage.

in olden days, teachers often punished the entire class if 1 student was caught chewing gum.
that sort of broad-brush punishment is not really allowed in schools today.

i’m not sure why-not! -
‘cause that’s sure how lawmakers, and loads of private citizens, want to respond to crime.
”there oughtta be a law!” :-|
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Most or all of this drama, humiliation, wasted taxpayer money could be spared -
with even modest attempt at presenting balanced facts from the start.


”We’re all just walking each other home.”
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Bootstrap
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

Post by Bootstrap »

mike wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:
mike wrote:The world has no other solution for violence than more violence. And so, I expect that eventually school security will become something similar to airport security.
Is that what freedom looks like? If we keep deciding that gun rights are unlimited and cannot be restricted, that impinges on lots of other freedoms. The Constitution is not the bottleneck here, politics is, but there are some measures that even most NRA members say they support.
Yes, for better or for worse, I think this really is what freedom looks like. Take as another example the freedom for people to drive automobiles, boats, and airplanes. Motor vehicle deaths in 2014 were 33,736. A tragically high number. But is high enough to cause society to give up operating motor vehicles?

This isn't to say that it doesn't make sense for the government to regulate vehicle safety, which they do.
But I don't have to go through airport-style security gates because of cars. And at some point, those measures start to make us look like a police state if we have to keep setting them up in more and more places.

So I hope we do find other ways to reduce the risk. And I think it's worth trying.
mike wrote:It also isn't to say that the government should not in any way regulate firearms, even in a society where private citizens are constitutionally permitted to carry weapons. It would make sense in my mind for the government to regulate types of firearms or accessories which are legal to own, which they already do to a certain extent as we all know. It would make sense in my mind for background checks to include mental health registries or terror/no-fly lists. Making these regulations or policies more stringent makes sense to me.
Obviously, we agree here.
mike wrote:However we should not kid ourselves that these measures will stop the problem of bad people obtaining guns and committing crimes with them. That is why an increase in the physical security (read: people with guns) around areas vulnerable to mass shooting of defenseless victims, such as schools, is only to be expected as these tragedies occur.
I have become more optimistic about this kind of thing over the years. After all, when I was younger, violent crime really was rising rapidly, then it started declining - I would have never guessed that when I was younger.

At the same time, our fear of violent crime keeps going up and up, fueled largely by sensationalist media and politicians or gun salesmen who promise to save us. Fear translates into mouse clicks, ad revenue, voter loyalty, and gun sales, so there are a lot of people who have good reason to push those buttons. So when reliable sources look at violent crime versus fear of crime, they show crime going down and fear going up.

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mike wrote:I say all of these things as a person who does not carry guns for self-defense, does not vote, and is not directly affected by gun regulations one way or another. I also have no interest in lobbying the government to change its policies.
I say this as someone who was once part of the Christian Coalition, ran for a precinct delegate as a Republican, and lobbied for Right to Life, but became disillusioned by much of what I saw and decided I could no longer join a political party or faction. I do vote, I also think that it's really important for all Christians, voting or not, to maintain a kind of independence from the political parties and factions. I do hope that Trump finds effective ways to deal with school shootings.
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Josh
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Gun crime going down coincides with the massive expansion of concealed carry rights. So if your goal is less gun crime, Boot, you should consider something besides a one-way ratchet towards trying to get rid of guns.

I noticed you only support proposals that tighten gun ownership. Would you ever support any changes to loosen gun restrictions - for example, nationwide licence reciprocity on concealed carry like we do for cars?
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Bootstrap
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Josh wrote:Gun crime going down coincides with the massive expansion of concealed carry rights.
I think the statistics are a lot more complicated than that, Josh. Both sides claim that there's an absolutely clear statistical relationship, they completely disagree about the direction of that relationship, and they are often looking at different datasets. I think it's definitely fair to say that the increase in guns has not resulted in a large increase of gun deaths. I don't think there's a clear decrease that is associated with guns.
Josh wrote:So if your goal is less gun crime, Boot, you should consider something besides a one-way ratchet towards trying to get rid of guns.
First off, I am not trying to get rid of guns, and you are not trying to arm every toddler in America. Let's be clear about that. The proposals I have mentioned are all favored by a majority of Republicans and by many gun owners.

And there's been a one-way ratchet in the other direction. I mostly would like to have the kinds of gun laws that the NRA promoted in the 1970s and earlier. There's been a huge change, and it started with a huge change in the NRA, which moved from gun training and responsible gun ownership to much more extreme positions. I would like to see gun laws that reflect what most citizens seem to be saying they want in polls, as long as it is compatible with the Constitution.

I think extremists are pushing us into very significant changes that we have never tried before, now trying to expand into Stand Your Ground laws, for instance, which say that you have no duty to retreat if you are defending yourself or others outside of your home. That effectively makes anyone with a gun a policemen, but without the training or accountability, and it's very different from traditional law. Nobody used to think the 2nd Amendment guaranteed rights that the activists and extremists seem to see in it until quite recently. Reminds me of Roe vs. Wade. Apparently nobody could read the Constitution in the first two hundred years of our country.
Josh wrote:I noticed you only support proposals that tighten gun ownership. Would you ever support any changes to loosen gun restrictions - for example, nationwide licence reciprocity on concealed carry like we do for cars?
We would have to have nationwide agreement on who is eligible for concealed carry before that would make any sense.

We have expanded gun rights quite dramatically, and I really think we need to shore up issues with background checks, licensing, and registration. I don't think this is the time to see just how far we can get gun rights to stretch, I think this is the time to notice how far we've come and think about the concerns people are raising.

I've mentioned some very specific proposals and why I like them. Could you please address them in the same level of detail? Which ones do you like or dislike, and why? The proposals I have mentioned have been mostly about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and mentally ill, and requiring training and licensing and registration.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Incidentally, why is supporting today's NRA an identity issue for some conservative Mennonites? I would have thought that what Mennonites stand for is quite different from what the NRA currently stands for, and that the two are incompatible.
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RZehr
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

Post by RZehr »

Bootstrap wrote:Incidentally, why is supporting today's NRA an identity issue for some conservative Mennonites? I would have thought that what Mennonites stand for is quite different from what the NRA currently stands for, and that the two are incompatible.
It’s not their conservative Mennonite identity that is informing their support, it is their conservative American identity that is showing.
Even then the support only can go so far, before stopping.
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Dan Z
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

Post by Dan Z »

My 2 cents - for what it’s worth:

I’d no sooner want to see government take someone’s hunting rifle or shotgun away then confiscate their fishing pole.

I’m not crazy about handguns because of the likelihood they will be used against a person - often in a moment of irrationality or error. I’ve also been on the wrong end of a few of them in a robbery once - thankfully they weren’t used. As a matter of conscience, I would never choose to own one. But I doubt there would ever be the political will in America to limit their proliferation.

I’d like to see a universal licensing process that would better limit the access troubled people have to firearms, and give law enforcement the right to get a court order to confiscate a verifiably troubled person’s guns.

Regarding assault rifles - I wish they were illegal. I don’t like my family living in a society where weapons of war are recreationally bought & sold. Frankly, I’d love to see all the Assault Weapons melted down and made into John Deer Tractors.

Finally, I think the 2nd amendment was a bad idea that has taken on near-religious significance in this country. It will likely contribute to the USAs eventual undoing.
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Josh
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

Post by Josh »

Bootstrap wrote:Incidentally, why is supporting today's NRA an identity issue for some conservative Mennonites? I would have thought that what Mennonites stand for is quite different from what the NRA currently stands for, and that the two are incompatible.
I’m not an NRA member.

I do think that turning into Australia or the UK isn’t desirable.
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KingdomBuilder
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Josh wrote:I do think that turning into Australia or the UK isn’t desirable.
The leftist rhetoric that I hear seems to state that becoming like the UK/ Australia in this regard should be the goal
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Josh
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

Post by Josh »

KingdomBuilder wrote:
Josh wrote:I do think that turning into Australia or the UK isn’t desirable.
The leftist rhetoric that I hear seems to state that becoming like the UK/ Australia in this regard should be the goal
They’re leaving out the details in Australia of the rising gun crime problem and no-go areas in the cities.

A few years ago, a crime syndicate had an underground factory turning out machine guns... and it took the government a while to figure it out and close it down.
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